The Consequential Conception of Doxastic Responsibility

THEORIA, 2016 doi:10.1111/theo.12110 The Consequential Conception of Doxastic Responsibility by ANNE MEYLAN University of Basel Abstract: We are occasionally responsible for our beliefs. But is this doxastic responsibility analogous to any non-attitudinal form of responsibility? What I shall call the consequential conception of doxastic responsibility holds that the kind of responsibility that we have for our beliefs is indeed analogous to the kind of responsibility that we have for the consequences of our actions. This article does two things, both with the aim of defending this somewhat unsophisticated but intuitive view of doxastic responsibility. First, it emphasizes the advantage of preserving, as the consequential conception does, the analogy with the non-attitudinal realm, i.e., with the realm of actions and their consequences. Second, this article regiments the most important objections to the consequential conception and answers them. The upshot is that there are no serious drawbacks to the consequential conception. There is, therefore, no reason not to favour it over accounts of doxastic responsibility that do not preserve the analogy with the non-attitudinal realm. Keywords: doxastic responsibility, doxastic compatibilism, responsibility for consequences 1. Introduction WE ARE OCCASIONALLY RESPONSIBLE for our beliefs. But is this doxastic responsibility analogous to any non-attitudinal form of responsibility? What I shall call the consequential conception of doxastic responsibility holds that the kind of responsibility that we have for our beliefs is indeed analogous to the kind of responsibility that we have for the consequences of our actions.1 This article does two things, both with the aim of defending this somewhat unsophisticated but intuitive view of doxastic responsibility. First, it emphasizes the advantage of preserving, as the consequential conception does, the analogy with the non-attitudinal realm, i.e., with the realm of actions and their consequences. Second, this article regiments the most important objections to the consequential conception and answers them. The upshot is that there are no serious drawbacks to the consequential conception. There is, therefore, no reason not to favour it over accounts of doxastic responsibility that do not preserve the analogy with the non-attitudinal realm (e.g. Hieronymi 2008, 2009; McHugh 2014, 2015). 1 To be sure, the reason why I call this conception consequential is not that I consider competing accounts of doxastic responsibility to be inconsequential. Consequential, of course, rather denotes the fact that doxastic responsibility is, according to this conception, a kind of responsibility for consequences, i.e., for the effects of our actions. © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria 2 ANNE MEYLAN 2. The Two Questions of Doxastic Analogy We are responsible for certain episodes of our doxastic life. That is the starting point of this article. By “doxastic life”, I mean the flow of events (or processes) that consist in our acquiring and maintaining beliefs and other doxastic attitudes.2 Suppose that I (1) acquire the belief that p, (2) maintain it for a moment and, then, (3) suspend my judgement with regards to p. This episode of my doxastic life involves distinct doxastic events and processes, namely the acquisition of a belief, the maintenance of this belief, and, finally, the rejection of this belief. For sake of brevity and to comply with the familiar use, I will simply speak of “belief ” in order to refer to these different doxastic events or processes. Rather than speak in terms of “my responsibility for the acquisition, the maintenance, or the rejection of the belief that p”, I will speak of “my responsibility for my beliefs”. Then, to reformulate, the starting point of this article is that we are responsible for our beliefs.3 This is not a very contestable starting point. That we are responsible for our beliefs is supported by the ordinary practice of praising or blaming people for what they believe or fail to believe. Economists are praised when, after years of research, they come to believe something new about the functioning of the financial market. My neighbour is frequently blamed for his beliefs about certain ecological facts. Praising or blaming people for what they believe or fail to believe occurs frequently and is generally considered to be legitimate. If we were not occasionally responsible for our beliefs, blaming or praising someone for one of them would always be illegitimate.4 Following other philosophers, I shall call the kind of responsibility that we display when we are responsible for our beliefs “doxastic responsibility”. In contrast, agentive responsibility is the kind of responsibility that we display when we are responsible for our actions or our failure to act, e.g., for having shouted at someone, for having failed to listen to his worries, etc. Doxastic responsibility and agentive responsibility differ in virtue of the entities on which they respectively bear. 2 Like the attitude of suspending my judgement. Below, I content myself with speaking of beliefs, but everything that I say is also true of suspensions of judgement. 3 The expression “responsibility for beliefs” is really a short cut. Stricto sensu, I am responsible for what happens to my beliefs and not only for my beliefs. Stricto sensu, I am responsible for the acquisition, maintenance and rejection of my beliefs. 4 A fundamental assumption of this article is as follows: for a subject S, to be responsible for x (where “x” denotes an action, a belief, a consequence of an action, an omission, etc.) does not consist, as certain philosophers have claimed (see, e.g., Strawson, 1962; Wallace, 1994) in being the appropriate subject of reactive attitudes like resentment, punishment, etc. The present article assumes that the explanation goes the other way round. It is in virtue of the fact that S is responsible for x that S deserves to be punished or resented. © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria THE CONSEQUENTIAL CONCEPTION OF DOXASTIC RESPONSIBILITY 3 Are they nevertheless analogous?5 Is my neighbour’s doxastic responsibility (freedom or control6) for maintaining the belief that there is no global warming analogous to the agentive responsibility he displays when he intentionally drives too fast? Let me call this question “the traditional question of doxastic analogy”.7 The traditional question of doxastic analogy Is doxastic responsibility analogous to agentive responsibility? Many philosophers answer the traditional question of analogy negatively.8 The present article does not object to this negative answer and I shall most often leave the traditional question aside in this article.9 The question that interests me is rather what I shall call “the general question of doxastic analogy”. 5 See Nottelmann (2006) for a detailed consideration of the arguments that would arguably allow answering the traditional question positively. 6 The traditional question is sometimes formulated in terms of freedom (or control). This is for instance the case in the quotation from Booth (2014) that is given below. The traditional question is then respectively that of whether doxastic freedom is analogous to agentive freedom and that of whether doxastic control is analogous to agentive control. I take these two formulations of the traditional question to be equivalent to the formulation that I favour in this article. This article assumes that a subject S is responsible for her action/belief in virtue of her action/belief being free (or in virtue of its being controlled). What is more, this dependence is such that our doxastic responsibility cannot be analogous to our agentive responsibility if our doxastic freedom is not analogous to our agentive freedom (or if our doxastic control is not analogous to our agentive control). This way of capturing the relation between freedom/control and responsibility is probably not unproblematic. However, it seems to correspond to the use made in the literature discussing doxastic responsibility. See, for instance, McHugh (2013, 2014) and Peels (2014). Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pushing me to clarify this point. 7 Let me highlight, even if this is rather obvious, that papers addressing the traditional question of doxastic analogy all assume that believing something is not a specific kind of action (like, for instance, juggling is a specific kind of action). Indeed, if believing something constituted a specific kind of action, there would clearly be no sense in asking whether we are responsible for our beliefs in the same way as we are responsible for our actions. If this were so, the traditional question would thus be irrelevant. 8 Among the philosophers who answer the traditional question of doxastic analogy negatively, some are doxastic compatibilists. Hieronymi (2008, 2009) and McHugh (2014, 2015), for instance, are doxastic compatibilists who insist that the traditional question deserves a negative answer. The reasoning that leads them to this conclusion is presented in section 5. Not all doxastic compatibilists share their view. Most strikingly, Steup (in Steup, 2011, 2012) defends a compatiblist conception of doxastic responsibility that makes doxastic responsibility analogous to agentive responsibility. However, note that in Steup (2008), Steup provides a negative answer to the traditional question. 9 One strong reason to think that the traditional question deserves a negative answer is provided by the following psychological – however debated (see Ginet, 2001; Ryan, 2003; Steup, 2011, 2012) – fact: our doxastic responsibility cannot be analogous to our agentive responsibility because we cannot control our beliefs exactly like we control our actions.To re-use Alston’s example (1989, p. 122), we cannot, at this moment, start to believe that the United States is still a colony of Great Britain just by deciding to do so. In contrast, most of us have the capacity to raise our arm just by deciding to do so. This, to repeat, is the outcome of human psychology and is, thus, a contingent matter. There might be worlds in which bizarre creatures control their beliefs exactly like they control their actions and whose doxastic responsibility is analogous to their agentive responsibility. The present article does not rule out this scenario. It stays neutral regarding whether the traditional question of doxastic analogy necessarily deserves a © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria 4 ANNE MEYLAN The general question of doxastic analogy Is doxastic responsibility analogous to a non-attitudinal kind of responsibility? The latter question is more general than the traditional question, since agentive responsibility is only one kind of non-attitudinal responsibility. Beyond our responsibility for our actions and our omissions, we are also sometimes responsible for the external consequences of these actions and omissions.10 Our agentive responsibility and our responsibility for the external consequences of our actions are both non-attitudinal kinds of responsibility for the simple reason that they bear on things other than attitudes. The purpose of this article is to defend a view of doxastic responsibility – the so-called consequential conception – that answers the traditional question negatively while answering the general question positively. The presentation of the consequential conception of doxastic responsibility comes in section 3. Before that, it is worth clarifying what philosophers mean when they claim that doxastic responsibility is (or is not) analogous to a non-attitudinal kind of responsibility. 2.1. Analogous kinds of responsibility Obviously, the answer that should be given to the general question – the question whether doxastic responsibility is analogous to a non-attitudinal kind of responsibility – very much depends on what is meant by “analogous” here. “To be analogous” can denote various relations of resemblance ranging from vague similitude to much stronger forms of similarity. Let me therefore clarify what “analogous” means in the debate pertaining to doxastic responsibility. To that effect, it is useful to express what it is for a subject S to be responsible for something in metaphysical terms. For a subject S to be responsible for something is to stand in a certain relation, viz. a relation of responsibility, to this thing.11 More precisely, for a subject S to be responsible for her belief consists in a certain relational state of affairs, call it “RESP-doxa”, which entails: • S; • the relation of responsibility that S holds with her belief;12 and • her belief. negative answer. What this article only assumes is the following contingent claim: our doxastic responsibility is not analogous to our agentive responsibility. I am grateful to comments from an anonymous referee that prompted the addition of this point. 10 See, e.g., Fischer and Ravizza (1998). 11 Famously, the exact nature of this relation of responsibility – whether it is modal, causal, consists in a form of reasons-responsiveness, etc. – is, in contrast, highly debated. 12 Some readers might think that it is preferable to say that RESP-doxa entails: “the exemplification of the relation of responsibility that S holds with her belief ”. I set this metaphysical issue aside here. © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria THE CONSEQUENTIAL CONCEPTION OF DOXASTIC RESPONSIBILITY 5 For a subject S, to be responsible for her action consists in another relational state of affairs, call it “RESP-agen”, which entails: • S; • the relation of responsibility that S holds with her action; and • her action. Schemas 1 and 2 in the Appendix illustrate these points. Bearing this metaphysical clarification in mind, I will now focus, as promised, on the meaning of the term “analogous”. What does it mean for a relational state of affairs to be analogous to another? Suppose that Bruno is my granduncle and that my close friend Nancy knows this. Nancy also knows that I am related to Paul by a family connection but she does not know by which one precisely. What does she ask when she says: “Is the way you are connected to Bruno analogous to the way you are connected to Paul?” The most natural interpretation of Nancy’s question is to take it to be asking: “Is Paul also your granduncle?” Nancy asks whether the connection that I have with Paul is the same as the one that I have with Bruno. Intuitively, two analogous relational states of affairs are two states of affairs that entail the same relation.13 As said, the purpose of this article is to defend a view of doxastic responsibility – the consequential conception – that has the advantage of answering the general question positively. We are now in a better position to understand what such a positive answer requires on a metaphysical level. The claim that doxastic responsibility is analogous to a non-attitudinal kind of responsibility is true when: • the relation of responsibility entailed by RESP-doxa is the same as one of the relations of responsibility at work in the non-attitudinal realm.14 3. The Consequential Conception of Doxastic Responsibility I have previously mentioned two non-attitudinal kinds of responsibility: agentive responsibility and responsibility for the external consequences of our actions. The 13 This seems also to correspond to Kant’s conception of reasoning by analogy. See Kant (1790/2001). 14 This way of understanding the traditional question of doxastic analogy does not diverge from the interpretation that is given by philosophers who answer the traditional question negatively. These philosophers do not have something weaker in mind. If what they discussed were some vague similarity between doxastic and agentive responsibility, they would not come to the conclusion that the two are not analogous. None of these philosophers deny that doxastic and agentive responsibility are in some sense similar. What they deny is that the relation of responsibility entailed by RESP-doxa is the same as the relation of responsibility entailed by RESP-agen. © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria 6 ANNE MEYLAN consequential conception of doxastic responsibility has the advantage of giving a positive answer to the general question of doxastic analogy because it contends that doxastic responsibility is analogous to the second kind of non-attitudinal responsibility. According to the consequential conception: Doxastic responsibility is analogous to the non-attitudinal kind of responsibility that we display when are responsible for the external consequences of our actions.15 Or, to reformulate the same point using the aforementioned metaphysical terminology, the relation of responsibility entailed by RESP-doxa is the same as the relation of responsibility that connects the subject to the external consequence of her action (when she is responsible for this consequence). Schemas 3 and 4 in the Appendix help to illustrate this point. Thus, according to the consequential conception, the kind of responsibility my neighbour has for his belief about global warming is analogous to the kind of responsibility he has for unintentionally driving over my flowerbeds. In both cases, the kind of responsibility at work is not agentive responsibility, but the kind that we display when we are responsible for the consequences of our actions. The difference between the two cases is that the consequence is a belief in the former but not in the latter. As we shall consider in detail throughout section 4, this intuitive and unsophisticated way of modelling doxastic responsibility faces two ranges of objections. The first range of objections (presented under points 4.2 and 4.3 below) contends that, while beliefs are sometimes the consequences of our actions, often they are not the consequences of our actions. As a result, the consequential model fails to capture all the cases in which we are apparently responsible for our beliefs. As we shall also see in detail under point 4.4, certain conditions – in particular the condition of foreseeability – are necessarily satisfied when a subject is responsible for the consequence of her action. The second range of objections contends that these necessary conditions cannot be satisfied when the consequence in question is a belief. Before defending the consequential model of doxastic responsibility against these alleged flaws, I would like to explain why giving a positive answer to the general question – as, to repeat, the consequential conception does – represents an important advantage. 3.1. The objection of ad-hocness There is a reason to favour, ceteris paribus, a conception of doxastic responsibility that gives a positive answer to the general question of doxastic analogy to one 15 This distinguishes the consequential conception from Ginet’s (2001), Ryan’s (2003) and Steup’s (2011, 2012) accounts, which, beyond their differences, consider that doxastic responsibility is analogous to agentive responsibility. © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria THE CONSEQUENTIAL CONCEPTION OF DOXASTIC RESPONSIBILITY 7 that does not. The preservation of the analogy between doxastic responsibility and a non-attitudinal form of responsibility avoids what it is appropriate to call “the objection of doxastic ad-hocness”. The objection of doxastic ad-hocness has been given a convincing presentation in two recent papers by Anthony Booth (2009, 2014). Here is one enlightening extract: The doxastic compatibilist owes us a principled account of why her criteria are criteria about freedom. By ‘principled account’, I mean here an account that does not presuppose the claim that beliefs can be free. Supplying such an account seems like a superlatively difficult thing to do, especially when the possibility of appealing to criteria about the freedom of action has been obviated, or rendered illegitimate. To the question: why are your criteria, criteria about freedom? The proponent of DC [the thesis that doxastic responsibility should be conceived along compatibilist lines, n.a] cannot now respond: they determine whether action is free, so they also determine whether belief is free. (Booth, 2014, p. 1868) Let me rephrase Booth’s objection.16 The problem is simple but crucial. The initial objective of philosophers studying doxastic responsibility is to find where, in the doxastic field, we could possibly locate something worth calling doxastic responsibility. Suppose that this investigation results in a negative answer to the general question of doxastic analogy. That is, suppose that this investigation leads to the conclusion that doxastic responsibility is not analogous to any nonattitudinal form of responsibility. Then, nothing warrants the use of the phrase “doxastic responsibility”, precisely because “doxastic responsibility” does not refer to a standard form of responsibility, to a form of responsibility that can be found in the non-attitudinal realm.17 Philosophers whose account of doxastic responsibility forces them to answer the general question negatively – doxastic compatibilists like, e.g., McHugh (2014, 2015) and Hieronymi (2008, 2009) – have no other option but to complement these accounts. They have, furthermore, to explain – and this is not unproblematic – why their accounts of doxastic responsibility capture a genuine form of responsibility.18 Otherwise these philosophers are open to the objection that their accounts are ad-hoc. This is the objection of ad-hocness. A conception of doxastic responsibility that answers the general question of doxastic analogy positively does not need to provide such a complementary explanation. It does not face the objection of ad-hocness. This is why we should, ceteris paribus, prefer an account of doxastic responsibility that 16 Booth formulates his objection in terms of freedom and not in terms of responsibility as I do. As mentioned already (see n. 5), I take the question whether doxastic freedom is analogous to agentive freedom to be equivalent to the question whether doxastic responsibility is analogous to agentive responsibility. 17 And not, for instance, something less than what we intuitively take to be our responsibility. See Peels (2014) for a convincing criticism of this kind. 18 See, e.g., Hieronymi (2009) and McHugh (2014, 2015) for attempts of this kind. © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria 8 ANNE MEYLAN answers the general question positively over one that answers it negatively. As we saw, the consequential conception answers the general question positively. Therefore, it has the important advantage of avoiding the objection of ad-hocness. 4. Objections, Replies and Refinements The two following claims, if correct, naturally suggest19 conceiving of doxastic responsibility, as the consequential model contends, that is, as being analogous to the responsibility that we display towards the consequences of our actions. Claim 1: We are not only responsible for our actions (or omissions), we are also responsible for the external consequences of our actions (or omissions) in the world. Claim 2 Our beliefs are very often the consequences of our actions (or omissions).20 Claim 1 merely repeats that there is a non-attitudinal kind of responsibility that pertains to the consequences of our actions (and not to our actions). Claim 2 is more controversial and a large part of section 4 is devoted to defending it. 4.1. Claim 1 I doubt that the first claim supporting the consequential conception of doxastic responsibility (claim 1 above) will raise any strong opposition. It is a widely accepted fact that we are occasionally responsible for the consequences of our actions in the world. Consider the following example: Gideon behaved very rudely during the last Christmas dinner. He heavily criticized his sister’s choice of wine, made some very provoking remarks about her political engagement, and so on. A few weeks later, Gideon’s offensive behaviour had the consequence that his sister did not come to their family gathering. That his sister did not come to their family gathering is a consequence of Gideon’s behaviour. This is not something that Gideon did. This is something that he induced. This does not prevent Gideon from being responsible for the absence of his sister during the next family meeting. Gideon is not only responsible for his actions during the Christmas dinner. He is also responsible for the consequence of these actions, viz. the absence of his sister during the next family 19 Note that the consequential conception does not follow from the truth of these two claims. The consequential conception would fail if we were unable to explain how the beliefs that are the consequences of our investigations are in some way or other foreseeable or predictable (this is the so-called objection of predictability that I address under point 4.4). And this, viz. the satisfaction of some condition of foreseeability, is independent of whether claims 1 and 2 are true. Claims 1 and 2 might be true and the condition of foreseeability impossible to satisfy. I am very grateful to an anonymous reviewer for help with this insight. 20 For sake of brevity, I leave omissions aside here. I come back to them in section 4.3. © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria THE CONSEQUENTIAL CONCEPTION OF DOXASTIC RESPONSIBILITY 9 meeting. As a matter of fact, several philosophers have tried to formulate an account of the conditions under which a subject is responsible for the external consequences of her actions.21 Now I would like briefly to illustrate how such an account could be integrated into the consequential conception of doxastic responsibility. I will do this by relying on Fischer and Ravizza’s account of non-attitudinal responsibility for consequences. Let me emphasize that nothing in the previous and upcoming discussion requires the implementation of Fischer and Ravizza’s account specifically.22 What I am doing below by relying on Fischer and Ravizza’s views could have been performed using any alternative account of non-attitudinal responsibility for consequences. However, since, as we will see below, McHugh’s own views regarding doxastic responsibility are inspired by Fischer and Ravizza’s account of our agentive responsibility, it is particularly interesting to make use of Fischer and Ravizza’s views in order to illustrate how a specific account of non-attitudinal responsibility for consequences can be assimilated by the consequential conception. According to Fischer and Ravizza, non-attitudinal responsibility for consequences involves: two interlocked – and linked – sensitivities. […] The inner mechanism leading to the bodily movement must be moderately reasons-responsive. Further, the outer path leading from the bodily movement to the event in the external world must be sensitive to the bodily event in roughly the following sense: if the actual type of process were to occur and all triggering events that do not actually occur were not to occur, a different bodily movement would result in a different upshot. (Fischer and Ravizza, 1998, p. 112) To reformulate, Fischer and Ravizza’s general idea is that a subject S is responsible for the external consequence C of her action A if and only if: (i) The condition of agentive responsibility is satisfied. That is, S is responsible for her action A, i.e., S’s action is moderately reasons-responsive. (ii) The condition of causal sensitivity is satisfied. The external consequence C is causally sensitive to S’s action A in the sense that the consequence would not occur if A did not take place (and if the other events that would induce C and that do not take place in the actual scenario do not take place in the counterfactual scenario either23). 21 See, e.g., Berofsky (1987), Feinberg (1980), Fischer and Ravizza (1998), Hart (2008), Rowe (1989). 22 I also do not presume that Fischer and Ravizza’s account of non-attitudinal responsibility for consequences is free from difficulties. Most strikingly, the counterfactual conception of causal relations on which Fischer and Ravizza rely has been the topic of an important controversy for at least 40 years. 23 I simplify here, for sake of brevity, Fischer and Ravizza’s account of our responsibility for consequences. Most importantly, according to Fischer and Ravizza, it is the inner mechanism that leads to the bodily movement that has to be reasons-responsive and not the action (see the aforementioned quotation). Fischer and Ravizza (1998, p. 46) keep the question of what these mechanisms are open. But they certainly involve decisional procedures. The second part of the condition of causal sensitivity is supposed to © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria 10 ANNE MEYLAN This short presentation of Fischer and Ravizza’s account of non-attitudinal responsibility for consequences leaves many of its difficulties and virtues aside. But it is sufficient to illustrate how the consequential conception can accommodate some specific conditions governing non-attitudinal responsibility for consequences. To repeat, the adoption of the consequential conception is, however, compatible with complete neutrality as regards the conditions governing nonattitudinal responsibility for consequences. If, for sake of illustration, we integrate Fischer and Ravizza’s conditions into the consequential conception of doxastic responsibility, here are the two conditions under which we will be responsible for our beliefs. A subject S is responsible for her belief that p that is the consequence of her action A* if and only if: (i*) The condition of agentive responsibility is satisfied. That is, S is responsible for her action A*, i.e., S’s action is moderately reasons-responsive; (ii*) The condition of causal sensitivity is satisfied. That is, the belief that p is causally sensitive to S’s action A* in the sense that the consequence would not occur if A* did not take place.24 Schema 5 in the Appendix illustrates this. 4.2. Claim 2 and sensory exploration Recall the second claim supporting the consequential conception: Claim 2: Our beliefs are very often the consequences of our actions (or omissions). The main worry for claim 2 concerns how often our beliefs are really the consequences of our actions (I discuss the conditions under which our beliefs are the consequences of our omissions or failures to act in section 4.3). It might be objected that beliefs are only rarely the result of our actions. If, the objection adds, doxastic responsibility is conceived along the lines favoured by the handle “Frankfurtian cases”. In “Frankfurtian cases”, a subject S is responsible for the consequence of her action even if, if she had not induced the consequence by acting in a particular way, another event would have taken place and would have led to the same consequence. 24 As an anonymous referee mentioned, the integration of Fischer and Ravizza’s account of our responsibility for consequences in the consequential conception seems to raise one difficulty. Suppose that I open the drawer to see whether my keys are inside. At the very moment I am performing this action, someone else turns off the light in such a way that I cannot see. This same person also activates the device implanted in my brain and, thereby, causes me to acquire the false belief that my keys are not in the drawer. I am intuitively not responsible for the acquisition of this belief. But, on the aforementioned conditions i* and ii*, I would be.This apparent difficulty does not, however, threaten the reasoning at work in the rest of the article. As said on several occasions, I rely on Fischer and Ravizza’s account only to illustrate how the consequential conception can accommodate some specific conditions governing non-attitudinal responsibility for consequences. The use of their account is not mandatory. © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria THE CONSEQUENTIAL CONCEPTION OF DOXASTIC RESPONSIBILITY 11 consequential conception, we would almost never be responsible for our beliefs. This is an unacceptable result. The dominant impression is rather that we are often responsible for our beliefs. I shall now resist this line of thought. When one wonders which actions generally result in our believing things, the candidates that usually come to mind are: • intellectually sophisticated mental actions, like the action of deliberating about an issue, trying to remember, etc.; or • intellectually sophisticated non-mental actions, like the action of testing data through experiments, inquiring, asking for information from someone, etc. Many beliefs do not result from demanding mental or non-mental actions like these. The objection is right on this point. For instance, when I acquire the belief that it is not raining outside by opening the curtains, this belief does not result from such an intellectually demanding action (whether mental or non-mental). But, as some philosophers and psychologists have highlighted,25 it is not only intellectually demanding actions that are causally responsible for beliefs. These philosophers and psychologists have identified another kind of action that is the cause of beliefs and that has, furthermore, the twin characteristics of (a) being very often performed and of (b) being much less intellectually demanding than the actions listed above.26 Following Matthen’s recent article on the topic,27 I shall show that the action that has features (a) and (b) is “sensory exploration”. Sensory exploration is: “a procedure by which subjects manipulate objects that they are examining, or move their own bodies relative to these targets of examination, in order to get a view of them” (Matthen, 2014, p. 42). More concretely, in each of the three following examples, the second sentence describes an instance of sensory exploration. • You need to read what is written in small letters on your medicine box. You frown your eyes to improve the focus. • You are about to leave your flat. You gently tap your pocket to feel for your car keys. 25 See Gibson (1988) and Matthen (2014). 26 Matthen might think that some of the intellectually demanding actions mentioned above are instances of sensory exploration. This does not really matter. The important thing to note is that sensory exploration is not always characterized by such a high degree of intellectual sophistication. There are less demanding forms of sensory exploration. This is proved by the fact that infants are also able to undertake sensory exploration. 27 According to Matthen, sensory exploration is a source of knowledge. The purpose of his paper is indeed to show that sensory exploration is able to provide certainty. I leave the justificatory role of sensory exploration aside in this article. © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria 12 ANNE MEYLAN • There is a noise behind you. You move your head to look at what is happening. As Matthen notices, “sensory exploration is ubiquitous in everyday life” (Matthen, 2014, p. 45). We undertake sensory exploration every time we move our body in such a way as to obtain an idea of something. And this, undeniably, happens very often. Moreover, as Gibson (1988) emphasizes, sensory exploration is undertaken from a very early age. It is through sensory exploration that infants discover the world around them. The fact that infants undertake sensory exploration shows – here is the connection with feature (b) – that sensory exploration is not always performed with the conscious purpose or intention of obtaining an idea or a view of something. Infants do not have the conceptual capacities required by the mental state that consists in intending to obtain an idea about something. As Gibson puts it, the infant is simply “programmed” or “motivated”28 to make use of the sensory systems that allow her to discover the world. This discovery is in no way intentional.29 Intending to obtain – or consciously pursuing the objective of obtaining – a view of an object is not necessary to undertake sensory exploration. This, among other things, differentiates sensory exploration from other beliefproductive actions like trying to remember something that happened, questioning someone about something that happened, and so on. With this in mind, let me reconsider the claim that I wanted to resist, i.e., the claim that our beliefs are only rarely the result of our actions. This claim loses its prima facie credibility once the fundamental and widespread role of sensory exploration is made obvious. It is true that only a minority of our beliefs result from intellectually demanding actions like the action of deliberating, trying to remember, or inquiring. But the ubiquity of sensory exploration shows that it is, nevertheless, wrong to claim that our beliefs are only rarely the result of our actions. Many of our beliefs result from this fundamental procedure of discovering the world. 4.3. Claim 2 and background beliefs Yet it is true that beliefs are not always the consequences of an action. Consider the following case. The lying mother Clarissa’s mother has told Clarissa that her father died during the Vietnam War when Clarissa was 20. Now Clarissa is 42 and she still believes this. If Clarissa had asked the rest of her family, she would have realized that her mother lied to her when she was younger. But she has not done 28 See Gibson (1988, p. 37). 29 This is true regardless of whether you take “intended” to refer to a previous intention or to an intention in action. © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria THE CONSEQUENTIAL CONCEPTION OF DOXASTIC RESPONSIBILITY 13 anything to question her mother’s claim.30 As a result of this, she still maintains the belief that her father died during the Vietnam War. The belief maintained by the 42-year-old Clarissa does not result from an action, not even from such an omnipresent and simple action as sensory exploration. Still, most of us will have the intuition that Clarissa is responsible for her belief that her father died during the Vietnam War. Does this threaten the consequential conception of doxastic responsibility? I do not think so for the following reasons: we are also responsible for the consequences of what we fail to do31 and beliefs are also sometimes the consequence of our failure to act. The 42-year-old Clarissa is responsible for her belief because this belief is the doxastic consequence of her failure to do something in order to question its content. “The lying mother” illustrates that certain beliefs are undeniably the consequence of what we fail to do (and not of what we positively do). This allows me to explain why, in certain cases, a subject is responsible for her belief, though this belief is not actually the consequence of something she positively does. However, many background beliefs – e.g., the belief that the world is not going to cease existing in three seconds, the belief that the fall of a feather on my arm won’t break it, etc. – are neither the consequence of something that I do nor of something I fail to do. These beliefs are, most of the time, neither the consequences of an action nor of an omission. When this is so, these backgrounds beliefs are not, according to the consequential conception, beliefs for which we are responsible. Rather than being a worrying implication of the consequential conception, this seems to speak in favour of this conception. Background beliefs are the kinds of beliefs for which we do not generally deserve to be praised or blamed. Do I deserve to be praised for holding the true belief that the world is not going to cease to exist in three seconds? It does not seem so. And this is not because the content of this belief is trivial (it actually is significant). This is because, as the 30 What does Clarissa foresee in the example of the lying mother? One thing is certain, Clarissa does not foresee that she will abandon the belief that her father died during the Vietnam War if she asks. If she foresaw that, she would not need to ask in order to abandon the belief that her father died during the Vietnam War. What she foresees, to say it briefly – this is the point developed at the end of section 4.4 – is as follows: if I ask, I will either 1. maintain my belief or 2. abandon it. Perhaps, like the people who passively deceive themselves – that is, who deceive themselves by omitting to ask or look at the evidence – Clarissa suspects that asking her relatives will very probably trigger some heartbreaking revelations and that she will abandon her belief as a result. Alternatively, she might take the chances to be 50% for each option (1. and 2.) but simply does not want to take the risk of losing her belief regarding her father. The latter considerations do not have any influence on the fact that she is responsible for her maintaining the belief that her father died during the Vietnam War. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pushing me to clarify this point. 31 This is another commonly accepted form of responsibility. See, e.g., Frankfurt (1988). © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria 14 ANNE MEYLAN consequential conception captures very well, there is nothing I can do about this belief. This is because my maintaining this background belief now is not something that results from one of my actions or my failure to act. If someone was providing me with convincing evidence to the contrary, I might indeed be responsible for maintaining the belief that the world is not going to cease existing. But this scenario is very different. If someone provided me with evidence that the world was actually going to cease existing, my maintaining the contrary belief would, this time, be the consequence of an omission. It is the consequence of my failure to question the content of my belief in the light of this new evidence. 4.4. The objection of motivation and the objection of predictability I suppose that the consequential conception of responsibility might also raise the two following objections. The objection of motivation 1. When a subject S is responsible for the external consequence C of her action A, necessarily, S is motivated to cause the external consequence in question. 2. This is not transposable to beliefs. When a subject S is responsible for her belief, that is, when her belief is the consequence of her action or omission, S is not always motivated to cause this belief. 3. Contrary to what the consequential conception claims, doxastic responsibility is not analogous to non-attitudinal responsibility for consequences. The objection of predictability 1* When a subject S is responsible for the consequence C of her action A, necessarily, S is able to foresee that A will probably cause C. 2* This is not transposable to beliefs. When a subject S is responsible for her belief, that is, when her belief is the consequence of her actions or omission, S is usually not able to foresee that this action will cause this belief. 3* Contrary to what the consequential conception claims, doxastic responsibility is not analogous to non-attitudinal responsibility for consequences. I will consider both objections in turn. There is a quick way of replying to the objection of motivation. While premise 2 seems correct (however, I describe one potential way of resisting premise 2 below), premise 1 is clearly wrong. When a subject is responsible for the external consequences of her action, it is not necessarily the case that she is motivated to cause this consequence. Gideon, in the example above, is responsible for inducing the absence of his sister during the next family gathering even if he is not motivated to cause this. In order for a subject to be responsible for the consequence of her action, it is only necessary that the subject be able to foresee that her action could have this consequence. The wrongness of premise 1 is sufficient to show that one cannot rely on the fact that the beliefs for © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria THE CONSEQUENTIAL CONCEPTION OF DOXASTIC RESPONSIBILITY 15 which we are responsible are not always things that we are motivated to induce (=premise 2) in order to prove that the consequential conception is wrong. Let us briefly consider premise 2 as well. I am rather tempted to think that it is correct. Nevertheless, it is interesting to emphasize that the plausibility of premise 2 depends on the way we interpret the expression “motivated to cause” it contains. Premise 2 seems very plausible if “motivated to cause” is synonymous with “intends to cause”. Recall the cases in which a subject’s belief is the consequence of sensory exploration. For instance, suppose that I hear a noise behind me, turn my head in order to look at what is happening behind me, and believe, as a result, that someone has just left the room. The belief that someone has just left the room, some philosophers will say, is a belief for which I am responsible.32 But at no moment in the process leading to this belief have I intended to cause myself to believe something. The process seems to be more automatic than this. But nothing forces us to interpret “is motivated to cause” in such a way that it would involve an intention. It might very well refer to a more mechanical kind of motivation, such as a natural inclination to do something. That evolution, perhaps, has designed us in such a way that we are naturally inclined to acquire beliefs, to acquire representations of the world, is not very contestable.33 On such an interpretation of the expression “is motivated to cause”, premise 2 is less plausible. On this interpretation, it might be true that, when a subject is responsible for her belief, she is motivated to cause this belief. It might be true, since my being responsible for my belief probably requires that my natural inclination to believe true things works properly. If this natural inclination is not working properly, this can, indeed, be considered a dysfunction of my cognition that is so fundamental that it deprives me of my capacity to be responsible for my beliefs. However, it may be, even if one is not convinced by this way of questioning premise 2, the fact that premise 1 is incorrect is sufficient to defeat the objection of motivation. I now turn to the consideration of the objection of predictability. Premise 1* is certainly correct. An example will help to see this. Broccoli I have invited my friend Amy over for dinner. When Amy arrives at my place, she is already suffering from a painful and very rare kind of migraine. This kind of migraine becomes even more painful if one eats broccoli. While unaware of Amy’s problem, I serve her a broccoli soup and 32 This is typically the case for doxastic compatibilists like McHugh and Hieronymi who take reasonsresponsiveness to be necessary and sufficient for doxastic responsibility. I say more on the conditions under which someone is, according to McHugh, responsible for her belief in section 4 below. 33 In contrast we are not, for instance, designed in such a way that we are naturally inclined to have salient experiences of blue. When walking in the street, I am naturally inclined to acquire a high number of beliefs about the world around me. But I am not inclined to experience blue objects in a specific way. This is not part of my natural design. © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria 16 ANNE MEYLAN encourage her to eat it despite her headache. Consequently, Amy suffers terrible pain for several hours after our dinner. I am not responsible for Amy’s terrible pain in this example despite the fact that it is a consequence of my action of serving Amy broccoli soup. The reason why I am not responsible is that this consequence is absolutely unpredictable. Perhaps I would have been responsible for reinforcing Amy’s migraine if I had forced her to drink a full bottle of whisky. But, in the present case, I had absolutely no idea and could not guess that Amy was suffering from this very rare sort of migraine. In the present case, I was unable to predict that my serving her broccoli soup would cause her to suffer terrible pain. And this is why I am not responsible for this consequence of my action. Let us now consider premise 2*. As a reminder, here is premise 2* again: 2*. When a subject S is responsible for her belief, that is, when her belief is the consequence of her action or omission, S is not always able to foresee that this action will cause this belief. Suppose that I hear a noise behind me, move my head in order to see what is happening, and believe that someone has just left the room, as a result of this action. The belief that someone has just left the room is something for which I am responsible. It is also the consequence of the action of moving my head (an action that is an instance of sensory exploration). Could I have predicted this consequence as required by the transposition of premise 1* into the doxastic field? No. I could not have predicted that my action would cause the belief that someone had just left the room. I could not have predicted that I was going to acquire a belief with this particular content as a result of my action of moving my head. More precisely, we are unable to foresee that our action will cause a belief with such particular content when the action in question aims at generating a true belief about a topic. Perhaps we are sometimes able to foresee that our action will cause a belief with such or such particular content when our action or omission aims at deceiving ourselves about something. Suppose that someone asks Clarissa, in the lying mother case, “Why haven’t you ever checked with your family whether your father died during the Vietnam War?” Clarissa might at this point realize that her failure to ask her family has had the consequence that she has never stopped believing that her father died during the Vietnam War. Clarissa seems, in this sense, to be able to foresee that her failure to ask has, for consequence, the maintenance of a belief with this particular content. But, once again, what might perhaps be true in cases in which the action aims at self-deception is definitely not true in cases in which the action aims at generating a true belief about a topic. And this is sufficient to show that premise 2* is correct. When a subject’s belief is the consequence of her action or © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria THE CONSEQUENTIAL CONCEPTION OF DOXASTIC RESPONSIBILITY 17 omission, this subject is not always able to foresee that her action will cause a belief with this particular content. Are we, therefore, forced to reject the consequential conception? There is still one way out. When my belief that someone has just left the room is the consequence of the action of moving my head in order to look at what is happening behind me, I am not, as we have seen, able to predict this particular consequence. But – and this is the way out – I am able to predict that my action of turning my head will cause me to believe something with regard to a certain question. When I hear a noise and turn my head in order to look at what is happening behind me, I am able to foresee that my action will cause me to believe something with regard to the question: “What makes this noise behind me?” More generally, even when I am unable to foresee that my action will cause a belief with such or such or such particular content, I am able to foresee that my action will cause a belief that pertains to a certain question. I am able to foresee that my action will cause what I am tempted to call a “generic belief ” – e.g., a belief that pertains to the question: “What makes this noise behind me?” But I am unable to foresee that my action will cause this particular belief – e.g., the belief that someone has just left the room – that falls under the generic one. As I have argued elsewhere,34 this difference has its perfect analogue in the non-attitudinal field. Sometimes, in the non-attitudinal field, I am only able to predict that my action will have some generic consequence. For instance, I am able to predict that my action of being nicer to her will have a positive effect on my mother’s well-being. But I am unable to predict which particular consequence this action will have. I am unable to predict, for instance, that my mother will sleep better. Now, crucially, the fact that I cannot predict this particular consequence does not remove all my responsibility. Even if I am unable to predict that my mother will sleep better, I am still responsible, in some way, for what I have induced through my action. The precise extent of my responsibility in this case does not matter for our purposes here.35 Let me quickly reiterate the last objection considered and my reply to it. When we believe something as a result of an action that aims at generating a true belief about a topic, we are most often responsible for this belief even if we cannot, in fact, foresee that our action will cause a belief having this particular content. This seems to threaten the view according to which doxastic responsibility is analogous to non-attitudinal responsibility for consequences (=the consequential 34 See Meylan (2015). 35 In this case, I would say that I am responsible for the generic consequence consisting in improving my mother’s well-being. But I am not responsible for her better sleep if I am completely unable to predict that my action will have this particular consequence. See Meylan (2015) for more detail. See also Nottelmann (2007, ch. 13) for a discussion of the concept of foresight in the framework of doxastic blameworthiness. © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria 18 ANNE MEYLAN conception). Indeed, non-attitudinal responsibility for consequences requires that the consequences be foreseeable. At this point, there are two crucial things to note. First, when we believe something as a result of an action that aims at generating a true belief about a topic, we are at least able to foresee that our action will cause a generic belief. Second, in the non-attitudinal field, we are also occasionally only able to predict which generic consequence our action will have. But this does not remove all our responsibility. If this is correct, the fact that we are, in certain circumstances, only able to foresee that our action will cause a generic belief is not evidence of a disanalogy between our doxastic responsibility and our non-attitudinal responsibility for consequences. In both the doxastic and the nonattitudinal realm, there are circumstances in which we are responsible for the consequences of our actions even if we can only predict that these actions will have such or such generic consequence and not their particular consequences. 5. The Consequential Conception and Epistemic Reasons-Responsiveness The previous section is devoted to defending the consequential conception of doxastic responsibility. I have also, previously, emphasized that the consequential conception gives a positive answer to the general question of doxastic analogy. The consequential conception therefore has an advantage that some influential compatibilist accounts of doxastic responsibility (Hieronymi, 2008, 2009; McHugh, 2014, 2015) lack: it avoids the objection of ad-hocness. Indeed, these doxastic compatibilists offer a negative answer to the general question of doxastic analogy. Doxastic responsibility is not, according to them, analogous to agentive responsibility. The purpose of this section is, firstly, to explain what pushes these doxastic compatibilists to give this negative answer. Briefly said – I develop this point below – what leads doxastic compatibilists to give this negative answer is that beliefs are responsive to epistemic reasons while actions are responsive to practical reasons.36 Secondly, I would like to show that the responsiveness to epistemic reasons is a feature of beliefs that the consequential conception is able to take on board. Certain doxastic compatibilists answer the traditional question of doxastic analogy negatively. According to McHugh (2014, p. 11), for instance, some of the existing defences of doxastic freedom fail because “they try to claim that doxastic states are free in just the same way that actions are free, and thus fail to do justice 36 This is, in fact, controversial. Some philosophers have claimed that beliefs are responsive to practical reasons as well. See, e.g., Reisner (2009). There are also philosophers like William James (1905) and, more recently, Ginet (2001) and Peel (2015) who take believing at will to be possible. It is, however, also a debated question whether the issue concerning beliefs’ responsiveness to practical reasons is equivalent to the question whether it is possible to believe at will. © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria THE CONSEQUENTIAL CONCEPTION OF DOXASTIC RESPONSIBILITY 19 to the fact that we don’t control our doxastic states as we do our actions”. 37 Steup’s (2008, pp. 389–390) way of formulating the same idea is as follows: “Assessing the freedom of actions calls for one yardstick, assessing the freedom of doxastic attitudes for another. It’s a mistake to think that the freedom of actions and the freedom of doxastic attitudes can be gauged using one single yardstick”.38 Let me focus on McHugh’s views.39 What leads him to claim that doxastic responsibility is not analogous to agentive responsibility? McHugh models his own account of doxastic responsibility after Fischer and Ravizza’s (1998) account of agentive responsibility in terms of moderate reasons-responsiveness. According to McHugh, a subject being responsible for her belief depends on her belief being reasons-responsive. McHugh’s view is, very roughly,40 the following: A subject is responsible for her belief only if she would not maintain this belief if she recognized a reason not to maintain it. Suppose, to illustrate McHugh’s main idea, that Greta believes that she needs to buy milk. According to McHugh, she is responsible for this belief only if she would not maintain this belief if she recognized reason not to maintain it. If, for instance, Greta would maintain this belief even after having realized that someone else already bought plenty of milk, her belief is not responsive to her reasons and she is not, therefore, according to McHugh, responsible for her belief. Note that his conclusion matches with our intuition. There is something deeply irregular in the way Greta maintains her belief that seems intuitively to deprive her of any responsibility for maintaining it. Now, a similar account – but, as we will see just below, not analogous account, according to McHugh – is sometimes considered to be true regarding our responsibility for our actions.41 The reasonsresponsiveness of our actions is sometimes said to play a role in agentive responsibility. Suppose that while I am attending a presentation of one of my colleagues, I suddenly stand up while recognizing plenty of reasons to remain seated. Upholders of an account of agentive responsibility in terms of reasonsresponsiveness would, for the most part, consider that I am not responsible for 37 McHugh does not express himself in terms of responsibility in this quotation. As mentioned already (see n. 6), it is, however, harmless to take the question whether doxastic control is analogous to nonattitudinal control to be equivalent to the question whether doxastic responsibility is analogous to nonattitudinal responsibility. 38 As we saw already (see n. 8), Steup has changed his view. He now takes doxastic freedom to be analogous to agentive freedom (Steup, 2011, 2012). 39 The reason why certain other doxastic compatibilists (Hieronymi, 2008, 2009; Steup, 2008) answer the traditional question negatively is, however, very similar. 40 I leave many of the subtleties of McHugh’s account aside here. 41 Or about the mechanisms that conduct to these actions, see Fischer and Ravizza (1998). © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria 20 ANNE MEYLAN this action because it was not responsive to my reasons. I consider myself to have reasons not to stand and I stand nevertheless. Despite this appearance of similarity, the reasons-responsiveness at work in the doxastic realm seems to be fundamentally different from the reasonsresponsiveness at work in the agentive realm. The reasons for which Greta might cease to maintain the belief that she needs to buy milk are of a different kind to the reasons for which I might stop myself from standing up in the middle of my colleague’s presentation. The former reasons are epistemic reasons. They are reasons that speak in favour of the truth or the falsity of the content of the belief in question. The latter are practical reasons. They are reasons that speak in favour of, say, the desirability of the performance in question.42 While beliefs are responsive to epistemic reasons, they are not, certain philosophers say, responsive to practical reasons. Actions, in contrast, are responsive to practical reasons. This is what leads McHugh to claim that doxastic responsibility is not analogous to agentive responsibility. Doxastic responsibility is not analogous to agentive responsibility because they depend on two different kinds of reasonsresponsiveness. • Doxastic responsibility depends on epistemic reasons-responsiveness. • Agentive responsibility depends on practical reasons-responsiveness. The view according to which beliefs are exclusively responsive to epistemic reasons is controversial.43 What is much less controversial is the claim that, at the very least, we believe most things for epistemic rather than practical reasons. As mentioned, my second objective in this section is to show that the consequential conception can capture the fact that beliefs are mainly, if not exclusively, responsive to epistemic reasons. Recall that, according to the consequential conception, when a subject is responsible for her belief, her belief is the consequence of one of her actions or omissions. Responsibility for belief implies, therefore, two segments (schema 5 in the Appendix provides some visual support). The first segment connects the subject to her action or omission. The second segment connects the action or omission to its consequence, that is, to a belief. To understand how the consequential conception integrates the fact that beliefs are mainly responsive to epistemic reasons, we need to say a few more things about what occurs just after the intermediary action (or omission). Let me rely, once again, on the example in 42 The literature dealing with the potential difference between our reasons for believing and our reasons for acting is vast. See, e.g., Engel (2013), Hieronymi (2005), Millar (2009), Olson (2004), Skorupski (2009). 43 Even if this certainly is the most common view. See n. 36 for exceptions. © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria THE CONSEQUENTIAL CONCEPTION OF DOXASTIC RESPONSIBILITY 21 which I hear a noise, move my head in order to see what happens and come to believe that someone has just left the room as a consequence of this action. What occurs just after I moved my head is that I have several perceptual experiences. These perceptual experiences are evidence or epistemic reasons about the origin of the noise behind me.44 And it is on the basis of these epistemic reasons that I believe that someone has just left the room. The precise meaning of “on the basis” in this context has been the object of many philosophical discussions.45 But one minimal explanation of what “on the basis” means – with which I suppose almost everyone would agree – is as follows. To say that I believe that someone has left the room on the basis of these epistemic reasons is to say that my belief is responsive to these epistemic reasons. 6. Conclusion In this article, my primarily aim has been to defend the consequential conception of doxastic responsibility against the most important objections that can be raised against it. I have also stressed that the consequential conception preserves the analogy with the non-attitudinal realm. This provides the consequential conception the important benefit of avoiding the objection of ad-hocness. The final objective was to persuade that no alternative account of doxastic responsibility is required. The consequential conception is an intuitive, unsophisticated account of doxastic responsibility that does all the jobs. Acknowledgements This article has very much benefited from the insightful suggestions and criticisms of two anonymous reviewers. My thanks also go to Robin McKenna for his careful proofreading and to the audience of the “Doxastic Agency and Epistemic Responsibility” conference (Bochum 2014) for their precious questions and comments. 44 Some philosophers would rather say that the evidence or the epistemic reasons are facts or propositions to which I have access through my perceptual experiences. The highly debated question whether epistemic reasons are mental states or not does not have any influence on my reasoning here. 45 See Sylvan (forthcoming) for a good overview. © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria 22 ANNE MEYLAN APPENDIX Schema 1 Resp-agen: the relational state of affairs consisting in a subject being responsible for her action Relation of responsibility Subject Action Schema 2 Resp-doxa: the relational state of affairs consisting in a subject being responsible for her belief. Relation of responsibility Subject Belief Schema 3 The relational state of affairs consisting in a subject being responsible for the external consequence of her action. Relation of responsibility for consequences Subject © 2016 Stiftelsen Theoria Action External consequence (e.g., the absence of Gideon’s sister) 23 THE CONSEQUENTIAL CONCEPTION OF DOXASTIC RESPONSIBILITY Schema 4 The consequential conception of doxastic responsibility. The relational state of affairs consisting in a subject being responsible for the doxastic consequence of her action, i.e., for her belief. Relation of responsibility for consequences Subject Action Belief Schema 5 Integration of Fischer and Ravizza’s account of responsibility for consequences in the consequential conception of doxastic responsibility. Relation of responsibility for consequences Subject Action Belief Relation of causal sensitivity Relation of moderate reasonsresponsiveness References ALSTON, W. P. (1989) “The Deontological Conception of Justification.” In Epistemic Justification: Essays in the Theory of Knowledge, pp. 115–152. London: Cornell Press. BEROFSKY, B. (1987) Freedom from Necessity. New York: Routledge and Kegan. BOOTH, A. R. (2009) “Compatibilism and Free Belief.” Philosophical Papers 38: 1–12. BOOTH, A. R. (2014) “On Some Recent Moves in Defence of Doxastic Compatibilism.” Synthese 191(8): 1867–1880. ENGEL, P. 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